Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I don't think that either is especially biochemically plausible. Dwarves that live on organisms that derive their energy from oil seeps and petroleum tar are perhaps more believable. In fantasy I would consider dwarves who grew fungi on pulverised coal and other special rock, with perhaps ritual magic, to be more aesthetically tolerable than dwarves who munched on lignite, but I'm not especially keen on either. Others' tastes might be the reverse.

On the other hand I see much less trouble with dwarves who grew their fungi in soil, or perhaps even animal and vegetable detritus that they deliberately buried, as leafcutter ants do. Remember that the mushrooms and truffles that we are familiar with and eat are just the fruiting bodies of myceliums that permeate and interlace sometimes large volumes of soil, or are commensals or symbiotes with the roots of trees. A dwarvish community could run tunnels through the soil under farms and forests, and even graveyards and middens. Then planting their crops in the tunnel roofs, or spreading spores above, they could live on the nutrients in soil humus and other waste, perhaps draw some energy from the roots of others' crops above, in the form not of carrion and garbage but of wholesome truffles and mushrooms.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

There isn't really any solution to underground dwarves that is biochemically plausible, but it's not clear how much magic can be invoked, and mining and fires are certainly associated with dwarves.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Yep, that's quite right. For myself I am more than happy with dwarves who cannot flourish without exchanging mineral products for agricultural products, because that is what miners and manufacturers do. If the dwarves are self-sufficient in food, then what does everyone else do for minerals, metals, and tools?

But I am happy to help if I can those world-builders who prefer their dwarves withdrawn and isolated, burrowing like maggots in the body of Ymir.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Perhaps the dwarves live underground but farm the high mountain valleys outside.


Hans

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I am not such a worldbuilder. I'm perfectly happy to have dwarves as specialists who aren't self-sufficient in food. The duality of trade and war is one of the themes I plan to explore, after all.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Mines aren't necessarily in mountains, and especially not necessarily in high mountains.

But yes: if you're going for a naturalistic history the dwarves probably started out with a sedentary way of life near valuable mineral resources and then developed mining and metallurgy in a state of agricultural/silvicultural/pastoral self-sufficiency. As trade and transport opened up they developed a comparative advantage in mining, metallurgy, and manufacturing, which allowed and encouraged them to specialise in those activities and let their food production decline. Or at least enjoyed population growth without agricultural expansion.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

Bill, how naturalistic do you want to make the deep backstory? Do you want races that are consistent with an evolutionary origin? Social economics that is consistent with a development from TL0?

Do you want diverse cultures, or only a few, perhaps divinely ordained, cultures per race?

How exotic do you want the biology? Are the races all essentially hominids? Or are some of them aliens like the trolls and elves in RuneQuest, with life cycles that are not strictly animal, let alone vertebrate?

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I'm trying for an effect closer to Tolkien than Stafford. I envision all the races as hominids; indeed, most of them could be cross-fertile, with the aid of magic, at least. I'm remaining agnostic about creation versus evolution, as no one at this TL would be likely to think of evolution, at least not with anything like biological realism. But I would like the feel of the races and the habitats and the cultures to be moderately naturalistic—indeed, somewhat more naturalistic than Tolkien. I'd like at least a partial equilibrium situation for each race and its immediate habitat, though not a general equilibrium for the whole world!

The world should be big enough so that every race can have diverse cultures. But there should be some sense of cultural and psychological affinity among elves or selkies from different regions, each if there are also some regional commonalities.

The big different element, other than the plurality of races, is going to be the existence of magic—not so much "spells," and certainly not fireball-hurling wizards, but there will be spirits, especially spirits of the land (I want to bring out the pagan or Shinto aspect of Middle-Earth more strongly), and the various races will have access to supernatural powers of different sorts. Those also should reflect the kinds of beings that they are and the habitats that they inhabit.

The economics and the military relations should make at least some naturalistic sense also. I have no problem with having the occasional epic hero. But I'd like to explore the interweaving of different races and cultures, and that means not just handwaving tricky bits to get a predetermined answer.

Bill Stoddard

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

That's a problem for underground dwarves without fairly magical biochemistry, because they can't exist absent an above the ground population, so they must have been either created or driven underground in the recent past.

Re: theme for a fantasy campaign
 

I'm not sure that I see the point you're making. This doesn't seem like a problem.

Bill Stoddard